Friday, April 4, 2014

The Facts on Women, Children and Gun Violence

The presence of a firearm in a home with domestic violence can transform an argument into homicide in a fraction of a second. Firearms and domestic violence are a lethal combination - injuring and killing women, children, and bystanders every day in the United States. In one study of 25 high-income countries, the United States represented just 32% of the female population but accounted for 84% of all female firearm homicides. A gun is the weapon most commonly used in domestic homicides. In fact, more than six times as many women are murdered by guns used by their current or former intimate partners than are killed by male strangers’ guns, knives or other weapons combined.

332,014 people died from guns between 2000 and 2010. That number is greater than the populations of U.S. cities such as St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati.

31,328 people died from gun violence in 2010, or roughly 1 every 17 minutes.

A gun in the home makes homicide three times more likely, suicide up to five times as likely, and accidental death four times higher than in non-gun owning homes.

Access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than five times than in instances where there are no weapons, according to a recent study. In addition, abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners.vi

Over 40 percent of guns sold in the U.S. are done so without a background check.

Gun Violence & Women

94% of female murder victims killed by men are killed by a man they knew. In other words, females are 16 times as likely to be killed by a male acquaintance than by a male stranger. In 2010, 1,017 women, almost three a day, were killed by their intimate partners.

Of females killed by men with a firearm, more than two-thirds were killed by their intimate partners.

In 2010, 52 percent of female homicide victims killed by men were shot and killed with a gun. Female intimate partners are more likely to be murdered with a firearm than all other means combined.

Women suffering from domestic violence are eight times more likely to be killed if there are firearms in the home.

Handguns are more likely than rifles or shotguns to be used in homicides in which men kill women. In 2010, handguns were used in 70 percent of cases where men used firearms to kill women.

In 1998, for every one woman who used a handgun to kill an intimate acquaintance in self-defense, 83 women were murdered by an intimate acquaintance using a handgun.

Access to firearms increases risk of intimate partner femicide more than five times.

Gun Violence & Children

2694 children and teens died from guns in 2010. That’s a roughly equivalent to a Newtown massacre every three days.

Between 1979 and 2010, more children and teens died from guns (119,079) than U.S. soldiers in the wars in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

In a study of 23 high-income nations, 87 percent of children under age 15 killed by guns lived in the United States. The same study found that the gun homicide rate for teens and young adults in the U.S. ages 15-24 was 42.7 higher than in the other high-income countries combined.

More than half of youth who commit suicide with a gun do so with one obtained from their home—and more often than not, the gun belonged to a parent.

In 2009, more 15-19 year-olds died from gun violence than any other cause except motor vehicles.